


Tastes Like Love

by killingg_eve



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: 3x05 reference, F/F, Tender - Freeform, Villaneve, soft, villanelle's painful memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:40:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26626096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killingg_eve/pseuds/killingg_eve
Summary: Eve cooks spaghetti for Villanelle. Something unexpected comes up.--"Villanelle realizes that Eve needs a few minutes to recover. Without another word, she goes into the bathroom and locks the door. When she looks in the mirror, her eyes start to well with tears. The familiar circumstance jogs her memory."
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 14
Kudos: 113





	Tastes Like Love

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to episode 4 of my stress-induced writing.
> 
> I hope this is enjoyable. I've been meaning to incorporate more angst into the tenderness. 
> 
> I found this concept in my notes... I woke up with the idea and jotted it down. That was in August, I think.

Spaghetti. Fresh spaghetti, with fresh tomato sauce, with parmesan and a grater and everything. Eve could handle this.

She goes to the grocery store after work and grabs a basket.

One onion: an easy start.

5 tomatoes.

_From the vine, or Roma?_

She decides that tomatoes from the vine are the Earth’s way of having a ‘default’ option, so she chooses five of the reddest tomatoes. She also decides to get a few extras, just in case.

Olive oil.

_Extra virgin? Light? Pure?_

She settles for whichever glass bottle looks nice, and she can’t help but think of _La Villanelle_. Maybe her girlfriend will appreciate the thought.

And the parmesan.

That one’s also simple—she heads to the selection of finer cheeses and chooses one on a whim, sure that any of them would be incredible.

Eve hopes that Villanelle will enjoy this meal, that she won’t be left feeling like Villanelle would’ve done this so much _better_. She holds her breath while she runs her debit card and hopes that Villanelle will be sensitive to how hard she’s trying. As much as she is typically unmoved by Villanelle’s sarcastic jabs, she wants this to go over without that type of ridicule.

//

Eve unlocks the door and steps inside with two grocery bags around her wrists.

“Hi, Eve!” Villanelle calls. She hurls herself off of the couch and trots over to greet her.

Villanelle is _always_ this excited when Eve comes home. It’s possibly the sweetest and cutest thing.

Villanelle wraps her arms around Eve’s shoulders, not minding that Eve can’t hug back, and kisses her.

“I’m making spaghetti for us, tonight,” Eve says. She’s hesitant; nervous.

Villanelle beams with excitement. “Eve! I can’t wait.”

Villanelle becomes chivalrous, then, and takes the grocery bags so Eve can hang her coat and bag.

She sets the grocery bags down on the kitchen counter, noticing the tomatoes and plotting something. She would have to be patient, but she is sure that Eve will smile, when it all unfolds.

Villanelle quickly grabs a tomato, a kitchen knife, and a plate, scurries back to the couch, and sets the items down on one of the cushions. She figures that Eve will get straight to cooking and not notice.

//

Eve gets to work, right away, sautéing some onion in the fancy olive oil she picked out, cutting up tomatoes so they can be thrown into a pot, and gathering seasonings—having them ready, rather, because she’s nervous and wants to have them close-by for when the time comes.

Villanelle pretends to continue watching TV, which is blaring with some ridiculous reality show that she became bored with, while she waited for Eve to come home. Since she is facing away from Eve, she carefully cuts the tomato in half on the plate she hid. Then, she uses her phone’s camera as a mirror to decorate the area under her eyes with tomato juice. She imagines that Eve will eventually call her name, and then she’ll bust into the kitchen and scare Eve with her self-made mask.

It takes a while for the moment to come because Eve is so busy.

Eve is absorbed in the tasks at hand, in fact. She has to stop herself from tasting the sauce too many times, but she worries for the worst—will she overcook it? Is it supposed to be this color? Is this how Villanelle would have done it? Does it ever finish cooking before or after the suggested amount of time on the recipe she Googled? She just wants Villanelle to be satisfied, really.

Eve can’t help but think about Rome when she sprinkles in the last little bit of fresh basil. They’d spoken of spaghetti and Alaska and freedom. But then, the bullet pierced Eve and it was a long haul before they became close enough, again, to revisit those subjects. It took _three years_. So now, with Eve preparing the pasta, she hopes that it’s exactly what Villanelle dreamt of when she first spoke of love. She hopes that even though she’d scorned Villanelle for her word choices, that now Villanelle knows that she’s revised the memory and accepted those words. Now, she writes a love letter back via the dish that stews beneath her own hands.

Can spaghetti taste like love? Eve longs to find out.

Something about how close she is to being finished with the preparation brings her back to the present. She thinks of Villanelle and smiles warmly, aching to finally chat about how Villanelle’s day is.

“Ville?” Eve calls.

There is no response. Villanelle isn’t even seated at the couch anymore—

Suddenly, Villanelle leaps from behind the wall that separates the kitchen from the dining room.

“BAH!” Villanelle shouts, holding the knife (dripping with tomato juice) and crossing her eyes to accent their creepy decoration.

“Villanelle!” Eve cries in surprise. She backs herself against the counter and knocks a small spice bowl to the floor, which shatters.

Villanelle didn’t mean to scare Eve _this_ badly. Her heart leaps out of her chest with worry.

“I’m sorry, Eve! I can get that—”

“I’ve got it,” Eve says, her voice laced with the slightest bit of coldness. She didn’t intend to be so easily spooked, but her stress towards making the perfect dinner must have wound up her nerves. She gives Villanelle a slight glare as she goes to find the broom. It’s embarrassment that she’s covering up, more than anything else, by acting so icy.

“Eve, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you, at all. I just wanted to make you laugh.”

Eve turns her back on Villanelle as she sweeps up the pieces of ceramic. She tries her best to hide behind a softer voice, but something about the past few moments makes her feel like the night’s dinner is never going to be as perfect as she intended, now. She doesn’t know who to blame, but she’ll likely blame herself, as she processes what happened.

“It’s okay, Villanelle. Dinner will be ready in a few minutes, if you want to…wash up.”

Villanelle realizes that Eve needs a few minutes to recover. Without another word, she goes into the bathroom and locks the door. When she looks in the mirror, her eyes start to well with tears. The familiar circumstance jogs her memory.

_This thing, this joke . . . this stupid stunt with the tomatoes. She has done this to her brother, growing up. She did it for Konstantin, once, but he only frowned—he wasn’t surprised at all. (Boring.) But the last time she tried this was with her mother._

_Mama had told her, “You’re not a child,” and she’d replied, “I want to feel like one.” And then she hurt—killed—her mother. And then she burned the house down._

“Villanelle?” Eve calls in a quiet, yet worried tone, while knocking on the door, a few times.

Villanelle doesn’t remember what the past few minutes were like. All she knows is that her back is to the door, she is curled up on the floor, she is crying into her sleeves, and there is tomato juice all over her shirt and face.

“Ville, are you okay?”

Villanelle sniffles, a few times, but she still can’t find it within herself to form any words.

“Dinner’s ready . . . I’m sorry I reacted so harshly. I really want to talk about it.”

Villanelle sighs and ducks her head into her arms, again.

“Please let me in, Ville.” Eve feels herself starting to choke over words. “I . . . I hear you crying.”

Villanelle hears Eve’s voice becoming unsteady. She gasps and raises her head back up to listen closer.

“Villanelle . . . did I make you cry?” Eve starts to cry, herself. Her voice becomes broken and she finds it difficult to push each word out of herself. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so . . . nervous, I never . . . cook. I . . . was stressed, but I,” she leans her forehead against the door, certain that Villanelle is close to it, based on the whimpering cries she heard, before, “. . . I want to hold you. Please.”

Not another millisecond passes when Eve hears the lock coming undone, from the other side of the door. She lifts her head from the door, right as Villanelle opens it. Then she sees Villanelle, who is covered in tears and tomato juice—which is everywhere, on her face, on her shirt, and in the front pieces of her hair.

Eve picks herself up quicker than she can think about it. She cups Villanelle’s face with both hands and kisses her, and she tastes the tomato juice, but she doesn’t care.

Villanelle only looks at Eve and feels frozen. She’d opened the door and accepted the kiss, but mainly because she wanted Eve to stop crying. She feels as though she’d stepped outside of her body for a while and come back—but became impossibly drowsy, upon return.

“Are you okay?” Eve asks, and when there’s no answer, she pulls the hand towel from the rod it is hanging on, splashes it with water from the sink, and starts to brush it over Villanelle’s face. She is gentle and draws it in downward motions, so as to not sting Villanelle’s eyes with tomato juice (assuming they aren’t already burning). She also runs it over the pieces of hair that are sticky.

The concern in Eve’s eyes, the tenderness of her touch. The contrast is sharp, compared to Villanelle’s prior experience.

Villanelle wraps her arms around Eve’s back while she works. It’s instinctive, really, like Eve is a life vest. Maybe she’s trying to believe that this is really happening. Tears start to fall down her cheeks, again, though, and that’s also something she didn’t plan on.

Eve finishes cleaning Villanelle’s face and tosses the towel on the bathroom floor, as Villanelle’s fresh tears fall.

Eve reaches her arms up around Villanelle and hugs her, guiding Villanelle’s face to her shoulder. She wishes that she wasn’t the shorter of the two, that she could envelope her fully, but this is the closest she can get.

“Baby, did I make you cry?” Eve finally whispers.

“It was just like . . . it was exactly—” Villanelle cannot get her first few words out. Everything she wants to explain gets caught in her throat. She sinks further into Eve’s shoulder, starting to sob with heaving breaths.

Eve resolves that all she can do is keep holding on. Keep waiting. Anchor Villanelle back to the ground, regardless of how long it takes.

Villanelle feels weak from standing and sobbing, and eventually sinks to the floor again. She doesn’t want to let go of Eve, so she hugs Eve’s legs and continues to cry into them.

Eve can only handle the sight before her for a moment. She crouches down to the floor with Villanelle, sweeping her up into her arms. With this, she’s finally taller, so she holds Villanelle close and tight.

“You did the same as Mama,” Villanelle finally chokes out, in one breath.

“Baby, what did your mom do?” Eve asks, drawing her thumb against Villanelle’s cheek.

“She didn’t like it. She told me to stop acting like a child. And then she said there’s darkness, and she said I had to leave, again.”

“Did I remind you of that time?” Eve asks.

“Yeah,” Villanelle speaks into Eve’s shirt.

“Did you think I was going to say those other things?”

Villanelle doesn’t respond to this with words. All she can do is bury her face further into Eve’s shirt and try to keep her heart inside of her chest while she chokes another sob against Eve’s chest. And god, she feels so weak. Her eyes are becoming swollen. Her face burns.

“Baby, no . . . I was stressed, and I was jumpy. I was nervous because I wanted you to like the food. But I can promise you that I am not going to say any of those things to you.”

Villanelle nods against her.

“I don’t think you act immature. I think you’re funny and clever.”

Another nod.

“If you have ‘darkness,’ or whatever, then we’re in trouble. Because so do I. My monster feeds it to your monster.”

By some miracle, Villanelle chuckles, in between her heavy breaths and her steady stream of tears.

Eve appreciates the reaction and smooths her hand over the back of Villanelle’s head, and all of her hair.

“My monster spoon-feeds the darkness to yours— _for breakfast_.”

A louder laugh, this time, and Eve can feel Villanelle’s smile against her shirt.

“Baby, I’m not going to ask you to leave. I want you to stay with me forever.”

Villanelle gasps, and she didn’t expect those words. She feels pieces of herself being put back together. Ones she forgot were fragmented.

Eve kisses the top of her head and pulls her closer.

“And if you ever leave me, then it’ll be tough for you. Because I’ll follow you.”

Villanelle reaches an arm around Eve, and when she can’t find a way to hold on, she makes a fist around the cotton of Eve’s shirt. Her sobs stutter, and it’s because the reassurance is changing her tears to happier ones.

“Even if you hate me, I’ll follow you. I’ll never stop wanting to be with you. You don’t have to worry about losing me.”

Eve places gentle kisses on the top of Villanelle’s head. She is becoming calmer.

“Baby, do you remember when we last had a conversation about spaghetti?”

“Hmm?” Villanelle manages.

“It was in Rome.”

Villanelle’s eyes snap up to look at Eve.

Eve sees how red her eyes are, and the sight makes her chest ache.

She continues, “You told me something. You said you love me and I’m yours.”

“I _do_ love you, and you _are_ mine,” Villanelle says, quizzically. She doesn’t know where this leads.

“I know.” Eve kisses her forehead. “And I love _you_ , and _you’re_ mine. And I love you forever, and you will always have me,

. . . _Oksana_.”

Eve expects the silence that follows, pressing her forehead against Villanelle’s and waiting for her stunned reaction to pass.

“Thank you,” Villanelle eventually whispers against her mouth. It’s possibly the warmest thing in the world, to her, having Eve’s forehead against hers.

Eve hums and kisses her.

“Eve, when I did that to, um, my mom,” (she doesn’t want to mention her, anymore,) “she wasn’t gentle. With cleaning my face off, I mean. But you were, and you did it . . . by yourself. You just did it. You’re perfect.”

Eve is warmed by this. She leads Villanelle to the nearby bedroom. Once inside, she pulls Villanelle’s shirt up and off of her.

“Oh, I didn’t know we were . . .” Villanelle raises an eyebrow.

Eve laughs and swats her hand against Villanelle’s stomach, playfully. Then, she pulls one of her own, soft t-shirts out of a drawer and hands it to Villanelle.

Villanelle pulls it on.

“Let’s have dinner,” Eve says. “I’ll run a bath for you, after, and wash the rest of the tomato out of your hair.”

Villanelle pulls at a sticky strand that she hadn’t noticed, till now. She can’t believe Eve isn’t repulsed by how messy she is.

Something about the cooking _and_ the bath feels like a luxury that is so tender, Villanelle could melt away in it all. Villanelle has known true luxury: designer clothes and expensive food. Something about Eve’s cotton t-shirt, homemade spaghetti, and being bathed was infinitely more valuable.

“I love you, Eve,” Villanelle says with a soft smile.

“I love you, too.”

“Thank you for making me dinner. I bet it will be amazing.”

“I hope you like it, Ville.” Eve becomes vulnerable. “I hope it tastes like love.”


End file.
